The workday can get so hectic you just need a breather from computers and voicemails and people you spend at least 40 hours a week with. Head downtown to the Dallas World Aquarium and take a lesson from a creature who really knows how to slow down. For the price of a counter-service lunch, you can cruise on through to visit a three-toed sloth. We've gotten to know Bella, our fave, but we hear the other two, Leno and Samba, are just as slow-going and amiable. Take a lean and watch the hairy mammal hang out on its tree, moving in slo-mo. Unlike other exhibits at the aquarium, the sloth isn't caged or enclosed, but free to reach out and slowly latch onto someone's hair (a highlight from one of our visits) or grab camera straps. But most often, they just appear to sleep. They're models of how to relax.

Call us lame, but we've gotten to the point where we sometimes enjoy a Good Records in-store a lot more than a club show. No smoke, no late nights, no cover charge, no drive to Denton, no drunken sound guys with a bass fetish. It's all of the fun without the majority of the hassles. And guess what? When you watch a show with a bunch of record nerds and bloggers, people actually seem to listen, which is really what it's all about. So grab a six-pack and stop in the next time there's a band playing. They'll probably be good. And if they're not, just remember, it was free and there's always the parking lot.

Soon the formerly conservative Rod Dreher will find himself to the left of our very own Jim Schutze. Dreher's leftward lurch began when he came out of the closet as an environmentalist. Then he penned a column admitting that his support for the invasion of Iraq was a total mistake. He would later announce his opposition to capital punishment. Finally, he wrote that he has problems with, well, capitalism and big business. At this rate, in a year or so, Dreher will write in favor of unionizing welfare recipients. For sure, there have been times when Dreher's evolution (our word) has been hard to watch, like seeing a college freshman change his stripes midway through his first political science class. But Dreher's honesty and insight always manage to shine through the awkwardness of his revelations. Here's the sound of our left hand clapping.

Public Trust owner/director Brian Gibb moved from Denton to a space on Commerce Street in 2006 and people crammed the joint, spilling out of the door and onto the asphalt. The Public Trust makes art a party and everyone's invited. Over the course of the last year, and through a transition from Art Prostitute into the Public Trust, the gallery has showcased impressively diverse exhibitions featuring local and national artists. We've seen skateboard art, simple drawings, tiny art, giant art, group shows, mad paintings, stuffed objects, photographs and more. And we're willing to bet those gallery peeps had fun through every show, which is part of what makes TPT a place you truly want to be. Their receptions are as friendly as house parties, often with crazy-good DJs and a little hooch to boot. The price of the work is friendly to the budget-minded and the well-heeled, just like the gallery itself.

There's no shame in diggin' on a little Starland Vocal Band or some Supertramp. Don't feel bad if you truly love Judy Collins. There's a place for you where people understand. That place is in Mesquite and it's a radio station with high school kids for DJs who probably have no idea whom they're playing. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt because they crank out the '70s Top 40 as if wool dickeys and macramé owls were back in style. With Robert Bass in the music director's chair, the station offers all the best from the age of super-sappy love songs. Jim Croce and Ambrosia never had it so good, even back before they had songs on albums that weren't Time/Life collections.

On September 13, former Dallas Morning News TV critic Ed Bark posted to his Web site, which he calls a blog, a handful of wonderful photos of Mark Cuban sweating his ass off and making his "O" face whilst rehearsing for ABC's Dancing With the Stars. Man looked like he was going to have a heart attack; we're not sure he'd make it through a single episode of Crawling With the Stars. Ed got the snaps and the interviews with the Mavs owner because Ed's got clout and chops from two-plus decades at Dallas' Only Daily, where he accrued the rep as "the dean of American TV critics," as Kansas City Star's Aaron Barnhart wrote of Bark when he took Belo's buyout one year ago. We'll admit we're not as enamored of Uncle Barky's obsession with local TV news ratings as we should be, but Ed's coverage of local TV news goings on has been invaluable: He's the one who kept us informed of the doings at KTVT-Channel 11 during the Regent Ducas era; he watched Anchorwoman when no one else wanted to; and he still goes to Los Angeles on his own dime to cover the fall and spring season previews, since The Dallas Morning News is still too cheap and short-sighted to employ a freaking TV critic. He's providing content about content. At least Ed's still bringing something to the table, which is more than most of us can say in the crowded but somehow always lonely blogosphere.